5 Mutants Toad Never Got into a Relationship With
by theghettocyborg
Summary: A "five things" style fic. Toad and: Rogue, Nightcrawler, Psylocke, Scarlet Witch, Wasp


1. Rogue

The last of his coffee had been pissed down the gutter hours ago and it was getting harder every minute to focus on the lines of protesters and would-be Curees outside the clinic across the street from the roof where he watched. There were a couple of what Toad thought of as ForgeTech cameras pointed at the rear and side entrances to the clinic and he monitored them as well.

This was the clinic nearest to Westchester where, it was said, they didn't press for ID if you didn't have one, they didn't tell your parents, they didn't need your real name. If any of Xavier's people were getting Cured, they'd come here.

He blinked away the gritty feeling in his eyes and scanned the crowds. Amid the shuffling, uncertain line behind the clinic barricades he caught sight of a delicate profile and a streak of white hair in the shadow of a hood. When she raised her hand to put the hood back he saw the white streak clearly, and the gloves.

For a moment he wanted to jump down there and pull her out of the crowd. And then what? Buy her a cup of coffee? Tell her "I'm sorry I put you in a sack and carried you off to die for mutantkind'?" Wrap his arms around her until she stopped hating her power? She probably wouldn't listen to anything coming from him.

He hoped that the Cure didn't change those white streaks. They were beautiful, and she'd earned them. He hoped Magneto would only ask him if he'd seen X-Men there, so he wouldn't be lying when he said no.

2. Nightcrawler

It had gotten to be routine to wake up in this cell with the blue acrobat hooded and drugged on the floor beside him. Stryker's concoction was slowly fading, leaving him cold and bruised under the looming shadow of impending clear thought. It felt like someone had choked him. He hoped he hadn't done anything he couldn't live with.

The acrobat always woke after him. Toad figured they drugged him more because he was more valuable; after all, the Incredible Nightcrawler was their assassin's knife. Toad was only the whetstone. In Stryker's puppet theater under the lake he'd shown Nightcrawler the places where people were soft, the combat rhythms they would be used to, the ways he could use walls, height, movement, and the vast surprise of a limb he shouldn't have to prey upon their expectations. He touched his battered neck and remembered the feel of that strong tail wrapped around it. Soon Stryker would decide his knife was sharp enough.

Nightcrawler pulled himself up into a wobbly crouch. His tail flailed for balance and one arm reached blindly for something to lean on. As Toad took Nightcrawler's hand and half lifted him onto the bunk light pooled and caught on the lines carved across his arm. After all these months Toad just appreciated the beauty of the design: he'd stopped wondering what sin it was.

3. Psylocke

The girl was asking for trouble by coming to this neighborhood, and while part of Mortimer wanted to see her expensive clothes get dirty he figured she deserved a chance. He picked up his pace so he could sidle up behind her as she walked down the street and whisper in her ear, but she turned around before he got quite close enough. It must have been dumb luck, because he was sure she couldn't have heard his steps.

"What do you want?" He winced inwardly at her educated pronunciation. It would bring the wolves for sure.

"You shouldn't be here," he whispered in his rough voice, "not with those clothes and that accent. You should go back home."

Her blue eyes met his yellow ones and he felt a strange pressure on his thoughts, akin to the sensation of being watched. As if from a great distance he heard the worlds "I just wanted to meet other mutants" inside his head and a shiver went down his spine

"Well you met one," he hissed and lightly nudged her back the way she came. She started walking and he followed at a distance, escorting her to a bigger, safer street. Just after the shops started to look successful two young men, the taller one dark haired, the shorter one a blond, made a beeline toward them.

"My brothers," the girl murmured, sounding slightly embarrassed. "Leave now and they'll ignore you." He dropped back into the retreating current of the crowd as she strolled forward to meet the boys' worried scowls with a charming grin.

4. Scarlet Witch

The Brotherhood had been in Seattle for about a month while Magneto and Mystique fished for useful breakthroughs among the west coast's top research schools. Sabertooth had vanished temporarily into the Cascades, and Toad spent much of his time in libraries and all-night cafes, brushing up on mechanics and lurking around mutant-interest websites looking for likely recruiting spots.

One coffee shop kept him coming back, both for their good tea selection and for one of the regulars whose raptor-ish but delicate face and curly dark hair picked at his mind like a puzzle he couldn't quite solve. He spent hours covertly watching her, trying to make her faded British accent, harsh cheekbones and the vaguely unsettled atmosphere that seemed to surround her add up to something.

From the slideshow of baby pictures that was her laptop's screensaver he guessed she had twin boys. From the multiple languages she spoke into her cell phone he guessed she was probably from Europe. And from the way all potential spills and mishaps ended in miraculous saves when she was around he began to suspect she was a mutant.

He planned to approach her one night towards the end of his stay in Seattle, but she was sharing her table with a platinum haired man. As Toad settled into a table behind her he heard her say "Are you going to spend the whole evening picking a fight about my babydaddy?"

He looked up in surprised amusement at her use of that phase and froze when he accidentally met the man's eyes. He looked exactly like Magneto minus fifty or sixty years. The other man broke eye-contact first with an angry and arrogant lift of his head. On his face there was the disgusted expression that most normal people got when they really looked at Toad and realized what a freak he was. He turned to the dark haired woman (who, Toad realized now, had the exact same face shape): "Why do you like this café anyway?"

5. Wasp

Janet cursed silently as a gust of wind blew her off course. The last thing she wanted was to have to tell Hank he'd been right about the tricky urban wind patterns being "too advanced" for her. Of course, she wouldn't _have_ to tell him as long as she could avoid hitting anything that would leave a bruise. Her tiny wings buzzed as she put all her concentration into avoiding the obstacles presented by the New York rooftops.

She dodged a suddenly rising pigeon and found herself enveloped in a damp, fleshy coil. She quickly looked around herself and realized that the thing wrapped around her was a man's tongue: an extraordinarily long and green tongue, but definitely emerging from the throat of a stocky man crouched by a roof access shack.

"Augh!"

She was dropped even before her squawk of disgust was fully voiced, but instead of letting her fall to the rooftop gravel the tongue's owner caught her gently in his hand and lowered her down. She stepped out of his palm with exaggerated dignity and resumed her full size. She didn't want to face a strange man while she was small enough to fit in his pocket, and when her wings went away the clinging spit on them would go as well.

"Is that normally how you pick up girls?"

He chuckled. "That's normally how I pick up a midnight snack."

* * *

Author's Note: Except for #1, all of these ignore X3 canon entirely and are set before X2 or even X1. Wasp in #5 is more like Wasp from _The Ultimates_ than the one from the classic Marvel Universe (where she's not a mutant at all), and Wanda from #4 is more from my own head than any previous canon incarnations. #2 is kind of the backstory for my fic "Ransom and Redeem."


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